"But I haven't anything decent to wear to it, miss," replied Nelly, looking dolefully down on the tattered frock, which her mother never took the trouble to mend, and which she, poor child, could not, except in the most bungling fashion.
Lucy walked home thoughtfully, and, as the fruit of her meditation, a print dress of her own was next morning produced, and a consultation was held with her aunt as to the practicability of altering it to fit Nelly. "I only wonder I didn't think of it before," she said, "for she is always so miserably dressed. Will you help me to make it up, Stella?"
"My dear, I wouldn't know how! The most I ever sewed in my life was to hem a pocket-handkerchief."
Mrs. Steele looked shocked at such deficiency in what she rightly considered a most important part of female education. She had always taken care that Lucy should spare enough time from her more congenial studies, to learn at least to sew neatly.
"Why, Stella!" Lucy exclaimed, "you're almost as bad as poor Nelly, who said she had never learned to sew because 'nobody had teached her.'"
"I've never had time to learn. I like embroidery better; and mamma said we should never need to do plain sewing, so she didn't see the use of our taking up our time with it."
"No one knows what she may have to do," remarked Mrs. Steele gently. "It is always best to know how, at any rate."
"Well, I hope I shall never have to, for I should hate it!"
However, when Lucy was fairly at work on the little frock, Stella good-naturedly offered to help her a little, though, never having been trained to perseverance in anything, her assistance was not very efficient.
Bessie Ford had gone home from Sunday school with her head turned by hearing some foolish talk about her dress. Alas! how often it is that Sunday scholars, on leaving the school, instead of giving one thought to the divine truths they have been hearing, allow their attention to be absorbed with the petty frivolities in which their thoughts run wild!